If the room has HVAC return you need to consider that in the equation. If I was doing something like this. I would wipe down the surfaces and floor after every single session to avoid clay dust circulating through my entire house. I don't know how good of a filter your HVAC system has, but most people use pretty crappy filters and have dated HVAC systems, so if you're in this category consider maybe closing the return if your HVAC system will be okay with that. Some can handle closing off returns and others screw with the system.
I don't know what type of garage you have, but it might be easier to insulate your garage then make all the changes for this room. Hauling pots up and down stairs is going to be a challenge, even bone dry pots can get heavy carrying full ware boards downstairs. I agree with Min that you need some type of flooring that you can mop. It doesn't matter how clean you try to be, clay is just naturally messy. I throw pretty dry and trim slowly, and I still make a darn mess.
I had a room on the same floor as my garage that wasn't being used and I decided it would be easier to just insulate my garage door and work in the 40-degree temps in the winter. I don't know how cold your garage gets, but you could get wall panel heaters and put them on timers to start an hour or two before you go in there so it is nice and toasty.
This isn't to dampen your dreams. You could easily make that room work, we are just telling you the downsides and the things you need to consider. It is up to you to decide how clean of a person you are going to be with the dust. I have seen studios that are horrendous and some that are sparkling clean.
Good luck and let us know what you end up doing and show us pics of the final room!

Shadow May has a workshop in May. I wanted to attend, but my son's karate tournament is that weekend. I love his work. He posted about it on his instagram. @shadow_may
The class was friday evening, saturday, sunday. They have affordable housing too. It was a good deal.

I use the black ice all the time. I bought 300# of it, had my supplier order it from their Savannah warehouse. I am not a huge fan of the black ice by itself. It is way to wet out of the bag... I actually mix it with my stoneware body to turn a red body with too many speckles into a dark reddish black body with just the right amount of speckles.
If you want a white porcelain and you have access to standard clays get 365.
You will be surprised how easy it is to use and your cracking problems will go bye bye.

Ohhhh. This is good information. I can manually do it after each firing as I have to go put the kiln in data transfer mode anyways. I will look into this. You would think they would just put this information in the firing log though.
I will post that stuff when I figure it out this week.

@neilestrick how does one chart firing cost? I was assuming that firing times would gradually increase over the lifetime of my elements, but it makes sense that the kiln will just kick on the relays more often to make up for their wear and tear. I need to download the other event log to see what all it provides. I might do that later this afternoon.
I emailed Bartlett about what the out2 means in the last column.
I wonder if they could add a log for the relay on and off and the time duration for each. That would allow us to easily see wear and tear in the elements per firing as you could record the number of times relays clicked on and off by the total time of the firing, the longer the elements are on combined with element clicks decreasing, the more the elements are wearing I would presume? When they get back to me about out2 I will ask them if they can think about providing us with that information in the firing log. I am doubtful, but it would be super useful.
@High Bridge Pottery Python is plenty good at data, but that isn't the main use, you can use the data packages provided with python to do some pretty powerful stuff. R was basically built completely for data and not really anything else. Python and R are both excellent languages, they were just made for different things. I like python a lot, it is a fantastic get stuff done without stuff getting in the way language. I have the most experience with C# though, but I like R for what it does.
Why did you stop working on your kiln controller project, you were making a lot of progress weren't you? Did you just get bored?

R is a data programming language. It is my focus in college and what I plan to work with when I graduate this spring... finally. It lines up with economics and more specifically econometrics, which is using data to make predictions and understand the values of each prediction and how much each regressor effects the overall prediction. It is also used for machine learning. It is open source and has with a beautiful IDE called R Studio.
R has a package called ggplot2 which is what is used by almost all major data scientist to make beautiful graphs. It is the most used tool in the data world.

I think you are right. SP is setpoint, probably the rate that the firing is set to go at, and the temp is the actual value from the TCs. Good spot sir.
In my data, it never overshoots the set point, so I am not sure if it will go negative.

In order to gather information about your firings, you are able to connect to your genesis controller.
The controller will hold the last 10 firings. The information it stores is the firing logs on temperature and the event log.
To access the data your controller needs to be connected to wifi and you need to be on a device on the same wifi connection.
Go to your kiln and hit Menu -> Configuration -> Export Log File
This will enable a server mode where your kiln has to remain until you are done accessing the data on your computer.
The screen will give you an IP address and a four digit code. Go to your computer and open a browser, type in the IP address and then it will provide a prompt for the code. Type in the prompt and you will get a screen that displays your last 10 firings, with temp log and event logs.
You can download them one at a time. Do not try to download more than one as it hangs up the kiln controller which is a very basic server setup and can only handle a very small amount of data. It takes a good minute or two to pull off a single firing log. So be patient until the download finishes or you will lock up the kiln controller and have to restart the process.
Once you have downloaded the data you can do whatever you want with it. I built some graphs in R that I will use to monitor my firings over time and see how my kiln is gradually slowing each firing down as my elements wear out. I am sure you could do other stuff with it as well maybe, but I am not sure what. Here is an example of what temp log looks like:
Time is in half minute intervals. So in order to get the hours you need to take the total time, divide it by 2, then divide that figure by 60.
For example one of my firings is 2184 observations, which is 2184/2 = 1092 minutes / 60 = 18.2 hours.
The temp one and temp 2 are my TCs. I am not sure what out2 and sp mean. I need to email Bartlett about those.
Here is a graph of my last three firings with one offset for the hold of 30 minutes to line up the plots.
As you can see this data is really useful to see how your firing is changing over time. When I get to the point of changing my elements I will make sure I post my entire graph so we can see the difference of the last 100+ glaze firings has degraded the elements over time. I single fire most of the time so I won't be recording bisque firings.
Anyways, just thought those of us who have the digital controllers would be interested in seeing what you can do with the data.
Enjoy!

Hey. I have been having discussions about the Genesis controller and realized that you can extract your firing data. I plotted my last three firings in R to compare them against each other. It is pretty amazing how accurate the kiln fires. One of these loads was practically empty and they are still all almost exactly the same. The offset on one of the graphs is from a hold.
I just thought I would post this here so you guys can track this as well if you want. I am going to chart each firing onto this graph so I can notice the differences in firing increases. I haven't figured out how I am going to offset the holds, but I know I can do it in R by offsetting the plot by the minutes of hold. I will figure that out later, but I just wanted share how cool this is. I love my controller. It is so awesome. Nothing like being able to check what ramp you're on via your cell phone.

Very Nice. This is what I am thinking for my house as well. I have a lot of places I could put these jars. We never really decorated our home after we moved in. Besides pictures of our son's school work taped to the walls and every cabinet and door in the house...
Beautiful work Pres.

I know this isn't the answer to your question, but have you tried contacting laguna and explaining your situation to them? I can't imagine they wouldn't have someone who could answer this question with an exact answer. I have never contacted them, but I have contacted a lot of other clay companies and they were more than friendly and helping. I imagine knowing that your a teacher and will be ordering clay for the rest of your career would be motivation enough to make sure you get what you are looking for.
Just a thought. I know it seems like a simple one, but there has been plenty of times I didn't even think about just contacting the source.
Also, I am sure other people more experience with laguna might have some answers here as well.